I Wonder If You Could Breed
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The red pigments necessary are different from those that cause blue coloring or the yellow (gold/xanthic) colors. You can't selectively breed red three-spots (though you may get quite bright orangey ones) as you'd need a mutation to cause red pigment to be present on the body.
bright orangey ones 
? what colors do u mix to get that 
? oh and mutation sound intresting 
how do u make a fish mutation 
?or it it from some funky inbreeding 
.................you no a lot about gouramis i gather you ether have been breeding them at one stage or still are what are some of the good strang things that you have seen come out of breeding them................it funny realy i got fish to start off with cuz i thort it would be an easy pet and would not cost much to take care of them now i have 2 big tank and 2 small ones and i want to set up a few tanks for breeding gouramis and at first i thort gouramis were boreing and i only got one at first cuz the first tropical fish i had when i was a kid was moonlight one but after geting one i started geting the difrent colors of the 3 spots and then some fry were born now im hooked on them 
.........i cant wait in2 days i will see all the typs of the gouramis the shop guy could get down from his supplyer i was told there would be some lavenders in them it will be intresting to see what turn up cuz i got the feeling a mix were going to show up and there was no shorre way of noing what they all will be but i hope i can get a least one lavender i have never seen any befor about from net pics are they a ruther new color or just hard to breed or some thing
? what colors do u mix to get that ? oh and mutation sound intresting how do u make a fish mutation ?or it it from some funky inbreeding .................you no a lot about gouramis i gather you ether have been breeding them at one stage or still are what are some of the good strang things that you have seen come out of breeding them................it funny realy i got fish to start off with cuz i thort it would be an easy pet and would not cost much to take care of them now i have 2 big tank and 2 small ones and i want to set up a few tanks for breeding gouramis and at first i thort gouramis were boreing and i only got one at first cuz the first tropical fish i had when i was a kid was moonlight one but after geting one i started geting the difrent colors of the 3 spots and then some fry were born now im hooked on them .........i cant wait in2 days i will see all the typs of the gouramis the shop guy could get down from his supplyer i was told there would be some lavenders in them it will be intresting to see what turn up cuz i got the feeling a mix were going to show up and there was no shorre way of noing what they all will be but i hope i can get a least one lavender i have never seen any befor about from net pics are they a ruther new color or just hard to breed or some thingTo get bright ones, you'd simply have to selectively breed them. You'd have to cross the brightest golds with each other and then cross the brightest of their offspring and so on. Gradualy, the color would become more and more bright (up to a point). Remember how I described the emergence of platinums in that other thread (the lightest golds were bred to the lightest for many generations...)?
Mutations are not something you can create through selective breeding or inbreeding. They are completely random 'mistakes' made when the fish' DNA is copying itself. All living things harbour mutations (in fact, if mutations did not occur, neither would evolution and we humans wouldn't be here!). Actualy, all fish have mutations but not all are things you can see (If I remember the figure correctly, every human being has, on average, about 100 mutations in their DNA - so you have about 100, I have about 100 etc - but we can't see them because they don't affect our appearance or are 'neutral' in terms of our biology. The same is true of fish.).
Think of it like this: imagine DNA is a rule book that explains exactly how to build a gourami. Now imagine this rule book is copied by one person and the copy given to another and that person copies it as well and passes their copy on and so on... Every time the book is copied by someone, there will be little mistakes in the words. Some of these mistakes may be realy small. Maybe a full stop is missing or a comma is where it shouldn't be. Or maybe they are major changes - like the word 'head' has been changed to 'read'. Some of these 'mistakes' in copying will lead to interesting changes. others, however, will be harmful.
In this sense, the 'interesting' changes may be a new color popping up (like red dwarf gouramies or gold three-spots). The harmful might be a bent spine or a faulty digestive system.
The thing about mutations is that, if they are interesting or useful, you can take advantage of them. For example, think of the 'balloon' kissing gourami. The 'balloon' body shape is, realy, just a deformity caused by a mutation that popped up sometime ago. When people saw this, they liked it and decided to try to breed more. By line breeding the original balloon fish for a few generations, you can produce a strain that always produces 'balloon' kissing gouramies - and now they are quite common. The same would be true of many of the interesting colors we see in dwarf gouramies today - solid red or blue do not occur naturaly in teh wild - but when they popped up in domestic stock, the mutation was retained within the population by line breeding for a few generations.
BTW, by line breeding I mean the original blue/red/balloon fish was bred with another of its species that didn't necessarily display the blue/red/balloon trait. Then some of the fry were bred back to the original blue/red/balloon fish. Normaly, at least some of these second generation fish will display the new characteristic so from then on you can breed fish with similar traits (as usual) to retain the mutation within the gene pool.
You're right that I've been breeding gouramies for a while and I still do it now but, recently, it's been a little more difficult (hopefuly by next year I'll get started again
). I, as you may already know, am especialy 'obsessed' with pearl gouramies and they've been my favourite fish for years and years. I also realy got into fishkeeping when I discovered gouramies because they aren't all too difficult to breed but still challenging and interesting enough behaviour-wise to be rewarding. I haven't actualy seen that many 'good' mutations in the time that I've been breeding gouramies... The vast majority of mutations are hidden ones like the 'neutral' ones I mentioned before that you never actualy know are there and the rest are more often problematic than useful or interesting.
I've had lots of fry born with spinal deformities (as you inevitably do when breeding fish) and a few with swimming difficulties, fin deformities and the like. Some of these may have been considered attractive by some but I wasn't interested in producing more of them at the time. I've had gouramies born with three ventral fins for example. Or even two or three per side (this is actualy quite common in bettas as well).
I also once got a fish with no eyes but, obviously, this wouldn't be something to encourage the breeding of (I should add that she actualy survived for a long time because gouramies have evolved to use their feelers in murky waters and I kept her alone - she died after 3 years by jumping out of the tank. If this fish had been born more recently, I would have euthanised. I don't keep deformed fry alive since I don't have the room to keep them all and I can't expect them to survive in an LFS).
In terms of color mutations, I once saw an opaline with all his color concentrated around his caudal peduncle in a kind of 'half-black' pattern (like you get in guppies). I had not bred him myself but he had resulted from a cross between two of my own fry that a friend had taken on. My friend didn't want to breed him at the time and offered to give him to me. I did breed him once and got some lovely opaline fry but none of them had the same pattern. Realy, what I should have done next was to breed some of his offspring back to him but, unfortunately, I didn't realise this at the time and missed the opportunity and he moved back with my friend. I have no idea where he is now but, actualy, he should still be alive since it's been about 4 years since then.
Mutations are not something you can create through selective breeding or inbreeding. They are completely random 'mistakes' made when the fish' DNA is copying itself. All living things harbour mutations (in fact, if mutations did not occur, neither would evolution and we humans wouldn't be here!). Actualy, all fish have mutations but not all are things you can see (If I remember the figure correctly, every human being has, on average, about 100 mutations in their DNA - so you have about 100, I have about 100 etc - but we can't see them because they don't affect our appearance or are 'neutral' in terms of our biology. The same is true of fish.).
Think of it like this: imagine DNA is a rule book that explains exactly how to build a gourami. Now imagine this rule book is copied by one person and the copy given to another and that person copies it as well and passes their copy on and so on... Every time the book is copied by someone, there will be little mistakes in the words. Some of these mistakes may be realy small. Maybe a full stop is missing or a comma is where it shouldn't be. Or maybe they are major changes - like the word 'head' has been changed to 'read'. Some of these 'mistakes' in copying will lead to interesting changes. others, however, will be harmful.
In this sense, the 'interesting' changes may be a new color popping up (like red dwarf gouramies or gold three-spots). The harmful might be a bent spine or a faulty digestive system.
The thing about mutations is that, if they are interesting or useful, you can take advantage of them. For example, think of the 'balloon' kissing gourami. The 'balloon' body shape is, realy, just a deformity caused by a mutation that popped up sometime ago. When people saw this, they liked it and decided to try to breed more. By line breeding the original balloon fish for a few generations, you can produce a strain that always produces 'balloon' kissing gouramies - and now they are quite common. The same would be true of many of the interesting colors we see in dwarf gouramies today - solid red or blue do not occur naturaly in teh wild - but when they popped up in domestic stock, the mutation was retained within the population by line breeding for a few generations.
BTW, by line breeding I mean the original blue/red/balloon fish was bred with another of its species that didn't necessarily display the blue/red/balloon trait. Then some of the fry were bred back to the original blue/red/balloon fish. Normaly, at least some of these second generation fish will display the new characteristic so from then on you can breed fish with similar traits (as usual) to retain the mutation within the gene pool.
You're right that I've been breeding gouramies for a while and I still do it now but, recently, it's been a little more difficult (hopefuly by next year I'll get started again
). I, as you may already know, am especialy 'obsessed' with pearl gouramies and they've been my favourite fish for years and years. I also realy got into fishkeeping when I discovered gouramies because they aren't all too difficult to breed but still challenging and interesting enough behaviour-wise to be rewarding. I haven't actualy seen that many 'good' mutations in the time that I've been breeding gouramies... The vast majority of mutations are hidden ones like the 'neutral' ones I mentioned before that you never actualy know are there and the rest are more often problematic than useful or interesting. I've had lots of fry born with spinal deformities (as you inevitably do when breeding fish) and a few with swimming difficulties, fin deformities and the like. Some of these may have been considered attractive by some but I wasn't interested in producing more of them at the time. I've had gouramies born with three ventral fins for example. Or even two or three per side (this is actualy quite common in bettas as well).
I also once got a fish with no eyes but, obviously, this wouldn't be something to encourage the breeding of (I should add that she actualy survived for a long time because gouramies have evolved to use their feelers in murky waters and I kept her alone - she died after 3 years by jumping out of the tank. If this fish had been born more recently, I would have euthanised. I don't keep deformed fry alive since I don't have the room to keep them all and I can't expect them to survive in an LFS).
In terms of color mutations, I once saw an opaline with all his color concentrated around his caudal peduncle in a kind of 'half-black' pattern (like you get in guppies). I had not bred him myself but he had resulted from a cross between two of my own fry that a friend had taken on. My friend didn't want to breed him at the time and offered to give him to me. I did breed him once and got some lovely opaline fry but none of them had the same pattern. Realy, what I should have done next was to breed some of his offspring back to him but, unfortunately, I didn't realise this at the time and missed the opportunity and he moved back with my friend. I have no idea where he is now but, actualy, he should still be alive since it's been about 4 years since then.
I would have euthanised fish or 2 after the breeding of one or 2 that could not swim right and never got to food as fast as the others i felt realy sorry for one that looked thiner then he should look cuz he was geting food but some thing was wrong inside i have never euthanised a fish cuz i dont no the right way to do it and i dont want to kill it if its a pain full death so how do u kill them the right way ? and when you said To get bright golds and simply have to selectively breed them. You'd have to cross the brightest golds with each other and then cross the brightest of their offspring i thort u could only get a very light gold or a dark gold oh wait is this the bight you were talking about http
/aqualandpetsplus.com/Gouramis,%20Trichogasters.htm ? cuz i have 2 female and one male but there all fairly light if you look at that one .......when you say line breeding do u mean here the original blue/red/balloon fish was bred with another of its species that didn't necessarily display the blue/red/balloon trait. Then some of the fry were bred back to the original blue/red/balloon dose that mean the fry were bread to the parent ? my prize gouramis now would be one of the 2 lovely opaline i have as i think i said befor one when he gets realy mad or wants to get with a female he turns a dark green color is so dark unless you go near the tank he looks black what do u think would be a good color to breed him with?? and what sort of looks could his fry turn out looking like
/aqualandpetsplus.com/Gouramis,%20Trichogasters.htm ? cuz i have 2 female and one male but there all fairly light if you look at that one .......when you say line breeding do u mean here the original blue/red/balloon fish was bred with another of its species that didn't necessarily display the blue/red/balloon trait. Then some of the fry were bred back to the original blue/red/balloon dose that mean the fry were bread to the parent ? my prize gouramis now would be one of the 2 lovely opaline i have as i think i said befor one when he gets realy mad or wants to get with a female he turns a dark green color is so dark unless you go near the tank he looks black what do u think would be a good color to breed him with?? and what sort of looks could his fry turn out looking likeYes, I did mean the fry were bred to the parents when I said 'line breeding'
Those golds would do but, basicaly, you just need to choose fish that have the color closest to what you're after and then, every generation, continue to only breed the fish that look most like what you want.
So, for example, if I wanted to produce a three-spot with a completely solidly colored body (so no spots or bands/spangles like normal three-spots have), I'd pick out fish that have the least amount of markings on them and breed them to each other. I would then breed any fry that are just as good, or better than, the parents. And so on and so on.
You can usualy see if fry are deformed as soon as they are free-swimming. I used to feed them to a large Anabas testudineus I owned. They are killed instantly this way.
With larger fry, I preffer to simply use clove oil. You can buy this from your local pharmacy as it's sold for tooth ache. A few drops will knock out fry almost immediately and it's stress-free. All you need to do is fish out the fry (or suck them up using a syphon if they are too small) and place them in a small cup of tank water and then add the drops of clove oil until they are clearly dead.
Your male opaline turns darker when he's breeding. that's normal and most opalines do it. What you cross him with depends on what you'd like to get out of the spawn. I'd just cross him to a dark female opaline and see what sort of opalines you get. As you may or may not be aware, there are many different opaline patterns and I think it's fun to experiment with crossing the different types or trying to create 'new' patterns of your own. Look at all these:
http/badmanstropicalfish.com/mb_pictures...ari_opaline.jpg
http/www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/3515/opalgour.jpg
http/www.thegoldfishbowl.co.uk/atlas/a-belo-204.jpg
http/www.aquazoo.co.uk/g/fish/fish_blue_gourami.jpg
http/www.igl-home.de/album.htm#trichopterus
They are all different!
Those golds would do but, basicaly, you just need to choose fish that have the color closest to what you're after and then, every generation, continue to only breed the fish that look most like what you want.
So, for example, if I wanted to produce a three-spot with a completely solidly colored body (so no spots or bands/spangles like normal three-spots have), I'd pick out fish that have the least amount of markings on them and breed them to each other. I would then breed any fry that are just as good, or better than, the parents. And so on and so on.
You can usualy see if fry are deformed as soon as they are free-swimming. I used to feed them to a large Anabas testudineus I owned. They are killed instantly this way.
With larger fry, I preffer to simply use clove oil. You can buy this from your local pharmacy as it's sold for tooth ache. A few drops will knock out fry almost immediately and it's stress-free. All you need to do is fish out the fry (or suck them up using a syphon if they are too small) and place them in a small cup of tank water and then add the drops of clove oil until they are clearly dead.
Your male opaline turns darker when he's breeding. that's normal and most opalines do it. What you cross him with depends on what you'd like to get out of the spawn. I'd just cross him to a dark female opaline and see what sort of opalines you get. As you may or may not be aware, there are many different opaline patterns and I think it's fun to experiment with crossing the different types or trying to create 'new' patterns of your own. Look at all these:
http
/badmanstropicalfish.com/mb_pictures...ari_opaline.jpghttp
/www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/3515/opalgour.jpghttp
/www.thegoldfishbowl.co.uk/atlas/a-belo-204.jpghttp
/www.aquazoo.co.uk/g/fish/fish_blue_gourami.jpghttp
/www.igl-home.de/album.htm#trichopterusThey are all different!
my one looks like this http/www.igl-home.de/album.htm#trichopterus
by that i mean you can realy tell that he has a dot or black line patten it all kind of turns to one color and that one color is a little darker then this http/badmanstropicalfish.com/mb_pictures...ari_opaline.jpg but my one has no light green paterchers B) oh i just want to get this right so i dont get some sick fish out of line breeding if i got 2 golden ones like you said with light dots and you want no dots you bread the 2 together then used the lightest one of the fry to breed with the lightest of the parents and then after they have fry do you use one of the fry from there to breed with one of the three parents fish from befor or would u need to go find a new gourami that has nuthing to do with family or what im confused as to how your ment to inbreed them in the right way as you go more down the track as in can rebreed back to the first parent after a time inbreeding fish i no little of i can under stand chooseing the same things in each parent if u want a fish with more of that what ever it may be i just get mixed up when the line breed gets put in 
sorry for asking for a more detailed answer on the same qestion you all ready answered i just find this part very confuseing and i want the breed to be fun not some thing where i end up with a fish that swims rownd with 2 tails and no head 
/www.igl-home.de/album.htm#trichopterusby that i mean you can realy tell that he has a dot or black line patten it all kind of turns to one color and that one color is a little darker then this http
/badmanstropicalfish.com/mb_pictures...ari_opaline.jpg but my one has no light green paterchers B) oh i just want to get this right so i dont get some sick fish out of line breeding if i got 2 golden ones like you said with light dots and you want no dots you bread the 2 together then used the lightest one of the fry to breed with the lightest of the parents and then after they have fry do you use one of the fry from there to breed with one of the three parents fish from befor or would u need to go find a new gourami that has nuthing to do with family or what im confused as to how your ment to inbreed them in the right way as you go more down the track as in can rebreed back to the first parent after a time inbreeding fish i no little of i can under stand chooseing the same things in each parent if u want a fish with more of that what ever it may be i just get mixed up when the line breed gets put in sorry for asking for a more detailed answer on the same qestion you all ready answered i just find this part very confuseing and i want the breed to be fun not some thing where i end up with a fish that swims rownd with 2 tails and no head Lol You won't get two tails and no head don't worry.
If you want to create a strain of gouramies with a 'new' color you would do this:
First get a pair of fish with a little of what you want. So if you want light-colored gouramies, find the lightest you can get hold of. If you want dark blue gouramies, find the darkest you can.
Cross them and raise their offspring. In this batch, there should be some fish that look like their parents or perhaps some that look better than their parents. So maybe, if you were after darker gouramies, there will be fry in the batch that are darker than their parents. it may not be a big difference but that doesn't matter.
So now you pick the darkest (or whatever trait you are after) two fry and spawn them. Again, you pick out the darkest of their fry and cross them. And so on. Over the generations, the fry should become darker and darker.
Because three-spot gouramies have not been ehavily in-bred commercialy (unlike dwarf gouramies for example), you should be able to cross brother to sister like this for quite a few generations before something goes wrong. You'll know when it does because the number of deformed fry will gradualy increase (you'll get deformed fry anyway - not just if you inbreed - it's always like that with fish).
Then what you need to do is find another gourami that looks a bit like your fry or better (so something that looks a bit like what you are after) and cross it with your new strain of fish. Then continue crossing the fry brother to sister until you need to breed with a different fish again when deformities start cropping up.
The new fish you get to cross the line with may not be as good as your fry so it may set you back a little. Don't worry though - you can usualy get pretty good results like this anyway. This is inbreeding because you are crossing brother to sister. Inbreeding is when you cross related fish (so uncle to neice, brother to sister, grandmother to grandson, father to daughter etc. It doesn't matter.).
When I said to 'line breed', I was talking about the scenario where mutations crop up. You see, many characteristics that arise from mutation suddenly, cannot be passed on to the next, immediate generation (actualy, they get passed on but they don't show up). By crossing the second generation fry (which don't show mutation) with the original fry that had it, you are more likely to get offspring that also show the trait. This is 'line breeding' because you are breeding back the offspring to their parent(s). It is actualy a type of 'inbreeding' but it's not brother to sister. You don't realy need to worry about line breeding.
Just make sure that, every generation, you pick out the two fish that look most like what you want from your spawn. It doesn't matter how they are related (so if they are brother and sister, that's fine. They could also be uncle and neice or you may find a completely unrelated fish to cross one of your fry to etc). You don't need to worry about the terminology (inbreeding, line breeding etc). Just cross what is most like the fish you are trying to create.
You won't get two tails and no head don't worry.If you want to create a strain of gouramies with a 'new' color you would do this:
First get a pair of fish with a little of what you want. So if you want light-colored gouramies, find the lightest you can get hold of. If you want dark blue gouramies, find the darkest you can.
Cross them and raise their offspring. In this batch, there should be some fish that look like their parents or perhaps some that look better than their parents. So maybe, if you were after darker gouramies, there will be fry in the batch that are darker than their parents. it may not be a big difference but that doesn't matter.
So now you pick the darkest (or whatever trait you are after) two fry and spawn them. Again, you pick out the darkest of their fry and cross them. And so on. Over the generations, the fry should become darker and darker.
Because three-spot gouramies have not been ehavily in-bred commercialy (unlike dwarf gouramies for example), you should be able to cross brother to sister like this for quite a few generations before something goes wrong. You'll know when it does because the number of deformed fry will gradualy increase (you'll get deformed fry anyway - not just if you inbreed - it's always like that with fish).
Then what you need to do is find another gourami that looks a bit like your fry or better (so something that looks a bit like what you are after) and cross it with your new strain of fish. Then continue crossing the fry brother to sister until you need to breed with a different fish again when deformities start cropping up.
The new fish you get to cross the line with may not be as good as your fry so it may set you back a little. Don't worry though - you can usualy get pretty good results like this anyway. This is inbreeding because you are crossing brother to sister. Inbreeding is when you cross related fish (so uncle to neice, brother to sister, grandmother to grandson, father to daughter etc. It doesn't matter.).
When I said to 'line breed', I was talking about the scenario where mutations crop up. You see, many characteristics that arise from mutation suddenly, cannot be passed on to the next, immediate generation (actualy, they get passed on but they don't show up). By crossing the second generation fry (which don't show mutation) with the original fry that had it, you are more likely to get offspring that also show the trait. This is 'line breeding' because you are breeding back the offspring to their parent(s). It is actualy a type of 'inbreeding' but it's not brother to sister. You don't realy need to worry about line breeding.
Just make sure that, every generation, you pick out the two fish that look most like what you want from your spawn. It doesn't matter how they are related (so if they are brother and sister, that's fine. They could also be uncle and neice or you may find a completely unrelated fish to cross one of your fry to etc). You don't need to worry about the terminology (inbreeding, line breeding etc). Just cross what is most like the fish you are trying to create.
i think i under stand now sighs the supplyer could not get the lavender gourami in for the guy i was going to get them from hehehe but he said hes going to start makeing him self a pain in the supplyers butt so that the supplyer will find some to just shut him up lol i got a new gold female its still yong and a fair size smaller then the rest i put it in with the big ones and i was suprised they all just get along i guess all my gouramis just hate angel fish lolol im going to try moveing the gold female to a tank by its self to try to give it lots of room to grow i want to breed her in time i think ..................they guy had lots of gouramis most difrent kinds of dawf gourami he had 2 moon lights ..............i have 2 realy big male moon light in the same tank as the others i think they are full growen sighs breedings going to hurt my pocket for money cuz im going to need probly 2 more tanks 
if i want to do it right and keep the babys till they get to a size where i can tell the ones i want to keep arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr 
tomany gouramisssssssss 
if i want to do it right and keep the babys till they get to a size where i can tell the ones i want to keep arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr tomany gouramisssssssss That wouldn't be inbreeding. You'd be 'hybridizing' - breeding two seperate species to each other. You also wouldn't get interesting colors. The offspring of this cross are just gold. Also, it's not a good idea to hybridize fish. It can lead to all sorts of problems for wild populations and is somewhat irresponsible IMO. It's also tricky to get three-spots and pearls to cross in the first place - it often results in serious damage to the pearl if it's the female - and if you try using a male pearl, the female three-spot is usualy dissinterested anyway.
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